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THE DALE WARLAND SINGERS The Dale Warland Singers, widely recognized as one of the nation's foremost professional choral ensembles, have become especially well known for superb a cappella performances of choral masterworks and for expanding the cho- ral repertoire through commissions of exciting new works. The 36-voice group was founded in 1972 in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and since has developed a loyal following of millions through domestic and international tours, subscription concerts, recordings and ap- pearances on A Prairie Home Companion and St. Paul Sunday Morning. An annual holiday pro- gram, Echoes of Christmas, is heard by an estimated 7 million American Public Radio lis- teners each year. Also contributing to The Singers' popularity are national tour performances by the Dale Warland Chamber Ensemble and the Warland Cabaret Singers, a 12-member ensemble that presents jazz and show tunes. The larger Warland Symphonic Chorus reaches thousands more in performances of major choral-sym- phonic works, in collaborations with renowned orchestras and artists including Edo de Waart, David Zinman, Robert Shaw, Roger Norrington, Leonard Slatkin and Neville Marriner. With contemporary music at the core of their mission, The Singers have commissioned works by Dominick Argento, Stephen Paulus, George Shearing, Libby Larsen, William Schuman, Jalalu Kalvert-Nelson, Edwin London and many oth- ers. This commitment brought The Singers the first annual Margaret Hillis Achievement Award for Choral Excellence in 1992 and back-to-back ASCAP Awards for Adventuresome Programming in 1992 and 1993. Annual tours throughout North America, with performances in communities of all sizes, have also earned The Singers a national reputation as Minnesota's premier choral ensemble. The group has served as ambassadors for the state on three European tours and performances on German, Swedish and Finnish State Radio and Television, as well as at international choral festivals. Among The Singers' acclaimed recordings are the holiday albums A Rose in Winter, Christmas Echoes, Volumes I and II, and Carols For Christmas, as well as Choral Currents, produced in collaboration with the Minnesota Composers Forum: Americana: A Bit of Folk~ and an all-Argento album. In mid-January 1994 they released their latest recording, Fancie, featuring folk songs and choral gems by composers as varied as Rossini, Brahms, Rorem and Britten, as well as jazz selections by the Warland Cabaret Singers. Thanks to SKYWAY NEWS for promotional assistance with this concert. JERRY RUBINO Assistant Conductor and Pianist of The Dale Warland Singers, Music Director of the Warland Cabaret Singers Jerry Rubino is a versatile musician who ap- pears in many roles with The Dale Warland Singers. This season marks his sixteenth year as a member of The Singers' bass section and his twelfth as the group's official pianist. In 1983 he created the Warland Cabaret Singers, a vocal jazz ensemble of twelve singers from within the ranks of the DWS. Rubino's arrangements have become staples of the repertoire of this en- semble, which regularly appears throughout the Twin Cities and is a popular feature of The Singers' annual tour programs. Among his lat- est arrangements ~re the Bernstein songs that open this program. Rubino's music activities cover a broad range. He serves as organist and choir director of Golden Valley Methodist Church, performs with the Minnesota Opera and Minnesota Composers 'Forum and is a music director of the New Music Theater Ensemble. As one of the area's most prominent jazz pianists, Rubino is in demand as a solo performer and coordinator of special events and is well known as a featured pianist at Dayton's Minneapolis and Southdale stores. He has performed in many chamber music recitals and often serves as a choral clinician and adjudicator. Rubino, who began his professional studies as a cellist at the Curtis Institute in his native Philadelphia, went on to earn degrees in piano, music education and conducting from Temple University and the University of Minnesota. A published arranger with Jenson, Word and Hinshaw, he was named in Who's Who is Rising Young Americans in 1989. 4 ~ DAVID MADDUX David Maddux, who arranged the Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim medleys for tonight's program, is a Seattle-based composer, choral conductor and arranger who serves as director and composer/arranger for Pro Homo Voci, a 16-voice gay and lesbian vocal ensemble, as well as composer in residence for the Seattle Gay and Lesbian Chorus. For a production initiated by Los Angeles theater mogul David Gest, Maddux recently orches- trated a new musical, Red Red Rose, based on the life of poet Robert Burns. His additional projects have ranged from scripting an all-Cole Porter revue, Swellegant Elegance, for the Seattle Men's Chorus and scoring a film, Through the Gates of Splendor, to writing lyrics and music for a musical comedy, Significant Others, and completing an original opera based on the life of William Butler Yeats. He has also arranged and produced a Grammy-nominated vocal jazz album, arranged music for the Electrical Parade at several Disney theme parks, and composed a substantial range of sacred choral and orchestral works. PHIL MATTSON Phil Mattson, arranger of the "Here's Hoagy" portion of this concert, is no stranger to Minnesota: before doing graduate work in choral literature and conducting at the University of Iowa, he completed undergraduate studies in music and philosophy at Concordia College in Moorhead. Now a faculty member at the School for Music Vocations at Southwestern Community College in Creston, Iowa, he has also taught at Pacific Lutheran University in Washington state and several other noted institutions. Among the 70-plus vocal wor~s Mattson has written and arranged are many jazz standards, including arrangements commissioned by such groups as The Four Freshmen, Chanticleer and Manhattan Transfer, for whom he did the noted arrangement of the Coleman Hawkins solo on "Body and Soul." His arrangement of "I Hear Music" was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1986. His vocal jazz group, the PM Singers, has worked with artists such as Bobby McFerrin, Richie Cole and Rob McConnell, in addition to the Spokane Symphony Orchestra under Gunther Schuller, and has received a Grammy nomination for the album Night in the City. SANFORD MOORE Minneapolis native Sanford Moore is an arranger, pianist and composer who is well known as the founder of the vocal ensemble Moore By Four. He has an eclectic style that merges gospel, jazz and classical music elements with those of the American musical theater, and he incorporates all of these in his own compositions as well as in Moore By Four performances. For tonight's concert, in addition to displaying his considerable skills on keyboards, he arranged the medley of Harold Arlen songs. Moore's work has drawn many distinctions, including Minnesota Music Awards, Black Music Awards and jazz prizes. The groundwork for his current composing and directing was laid when he was music director for organizations including the Mixed Blood and Penumbra Theater companies. RANDY WINKLER Randy Winkler has an extensive list of credits at area theaters. At the Chanhassen Dinner Theatres he has acted in Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady, Annie and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and has choreographed a host of works ranging from Hello, Dolly! and Kiss Me, Kate to The Music Man. He has also choreographed for the Minnesota Festival Theatre, the Cricket Theater, the Illusion Theater, Actors Theater and Premiere Productions, as well as the Minnesota Orchestra's summer "Cabaret Pops" concerts, and has played a variety of roles at the Paul Bunyan Playhouse, Brass Tacks Theater and the Minnesota Opera. Winkler has directed at many of these same theaters as well as at Park Square, Theatre in the Round and Patchwork Community Theatre, and has directed or choreographed industrial shows featuring personalities such as Bob Newhart, Rita Moreno, Amy Grant and Phyllis George. 5 ~ PROGRAM NOTES every musical written after it was to be judged BY BRIAN NEWHOUSE by its standard. Thirty-seven years on, "There's a Place for Us" and "Tonight" still sound re- LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918-1990) markably fresh - especially in these new Rubino There are few introductory sentences in the arrangements. notoriously dry Grove's Dictionary of Music to The 1956 comic operetta Candide took a equal that given to Leonard Bernstein. Nor- longer road to success. Despite the panache and mally, a musician's listing there begins with a beauty of its "Glitter and be Gay" and "Make single word, like "singer" or "musicologist," then our Garden Grow," nobody - most of all come the facts. Bernstein, however, weighs in Bernstein himself - was quite happy with the with "Composer, conductor, teacher, and pia- way it turned out, so for the next decade and a nist." Subtle, but a sure sign of the unsurpassed half he hired and fired librettists, chopped depth and breadth of America's most versatile scenes, added music which he'd later delete ... mUSICIan. until 1973 it was ready to go again. Another We begin Big Band, Broadway and Blues decade passed before Candide reached the final with Bernstein the composer. His 1940s-50s version that sold out the Guthrie Theater for From "WEST SIDE STORY~ several weeks in 1989 and left critics and audi- TONIGHT ences groping for superlatives. Let's leave that Lyric by STU'Hf..' SO:oo.OHU"I "\We b~ LEO'.-\RO 8EJl"'STTJ~ o AI o to our understated friends at Grove's: "What ~I Wumly ~ ~ m ! Bernstein did above all is proclaim that an Ameri- ! i! ; I; J J j2J ~~===J=J$tit,; ..." .' can can be a remarkable and exciting musician." HOAGY CARMICHAEL (1899-1981) Hoagy Carmichael was studying law in his ~.£.7 hometown of Bloomington, Indiana, when he W m===~r===--=-==--J r t recorded his first song.

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